


Blossom

by Sententiae



Category: Magic Knight Rayearth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:10:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sententiae/pseuds/Sententiae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Geo is used to waiting for Eagle to wake up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blossom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [down](https://archiveofourown.org/users/down/gifts).



> Eek! It has been years since I’ve written MKR fic, so I apologise for any inconsistencies. The enthusiasm of your letter totally swept me up into a wave of nostalgia and love of my own! I have so much love for these two.

Somehow, even in Autozam, the cherry blossoms still manage to bloom in Spring.

A wisp of wind whispers through the trees and soft flowers sink through the air, flushed from tangled branches that arch green or bare for most of the year. Geo is captivated by their descent, gently catching one, hesitant blossom against the calloused palm of his hand. He’s terrified of bruising the gentle petals, swollen white and pinched pink around the fragile tips. He’s little more than a brute in comparison, one who masters mechanics instead of metaphors. 

His breath hitches, and he waits.

The flower bobbles slightly in the flimsy breeze, before stilling in his hand. Geo thinks he can almost breathe again, now that this flower is finally safe. 

The rest of the blossoms fall, tumbling like the finest of snowflakes to the soot stained soil, too delicate to survive the corrosive landscape of this dying world. Thin and translucent, the petals soak into the ground, stained black in their last, tortured moments. 

Without the threaded silk of sap flowing through the skeleton twigs, Geo knows that even the petals of the surviving blossom in his palm will disintegrate eventually into ash.

Nothing ever survives in Autozam for long, least of all those spun in beauty. 

He finds Eagle nearby, sleeping up amongst the blossoms, his regal gowns spilling down the branches and dangling precariously close to earth that bubbles beneath the surface with thick, toxic oil. He sleeps more these days, eyes tired and drawn. Eagle’s forehead seems forever creased with concerns that Geo barely dares brush with the tips of faithful fingers. Geo doubts his own depth too much to ever truly approach those concerns with something as dangerous as his mind or heart. 

It has been a long day, their last here in Autozam before they are whisked away back to some place less artificial and stagnant. It’s a relief to be returning to space, where emptiness is natural and not something that desperately needs to be filled and profited from. At least in space the air he breathes in is deliberately artificial, and devoid of all the cluttered smog that the air in Autozam is first filtered through.

Geo doubts the trees will still be here when he returns, the blooms will likely not even last until nightfall. At least ... at least Eagle will not be here to see their final descent.

What do blossoms dream of? Are there sweet dreams of teased, moonlight awakenings, or nightmares of the cascading, kamikaze fall that comes too soon afterwards?

And Geo has to wake Eagle up. 

As is so often the case, Eagle is three steps ahead of him. Golden eyes flutter reluctantly open before Geo has a chance to say a word, blurred and sleepy before sharpening into razor awareness.

“I fell asleep,” Eagle confesses when he sees Geo down below, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he stretches out lazily along the branch. Elegant and all sleek lines, Eagle is regal even like this, perched half way up a tree. Geo ducks his chin knowingly and grins back, his left eyebrow popping upwards. 

‘Oh, really?’ the eyebrow quips, laughter and humour and lighter than air.

‘Again,’ the tightening around Geo’s eyes silently murmurs. ‘You seem to spend more hours asleep than awake, some days.’

Eagle’s smile softens. He reads something else entirely in Geo, something that cannot be accessed as superficially as humour or concern. Geo wonders what it is that Eagle sees. If it keeps the light shining like silver in Eagle’s eyes, then Geo is prepared to mine that emotion, that figment for all that it is worth.

Eagle lets out a deflated little sigh, dipping his head to the side. Blond hair slides across his eyes, and Geo almost panics. Eagle is gone, ripped away from Geo and there is _nothing_ left in his place but hurt and anger and anguish and loss-

And then Eagle peers through shimmering strands of hair that are caught like webs in the sunlight, a familiar humour in his eyes and a casual, exhausting warmth spilling over. 

No, not over. ‘Over’ isn’t quite right.

Out.

Even Eagle cannot possibly have an endless well of heat. At some point, it has to run cold. 

The thought terrifies him.

“I suppose I should come down,” Eagle says reluctantly, glancing down thoughtfully. It’s a small drop of only a couple of meters, but Geo can suddenly see it only as an endless abyss.

_Stay up there,_ Geo pleads silently, urgently. _Stay where it is safe. Because once you start to fall-_

Eagle pushes away from the artificial sanctuary of the trees, and it is nature for Geo to reach upwards and forward, just as it is nature that has Eagle trusting Geo more intrinsically than his next breath.

Eagle falls, and Geo catches him. He feels just as temporary in Geo’s arms as one of the blossoms. 

“Thank you,” Eagle murmurs as he leans in, the back of one, gloved hand grazing up over the collar of Geo’s shirt before coming to curl at the nape of Geo’s neck. Eagle feels cool, almost metallic, so much like this twisted, artificial world while somehow still being Autozam’s complete opposite. It has been years since Geo last attempted to understand the contradiction that is Eagle and Autozam, knowing only that one is an extension of the other. 

And Autozam is fading, falling in under the weight of the world built so optimistically on top of it.

Quiet, resigned eyes briefly get caught in Geo’s desperate ones, before slipping away.

Eagle is always, always slipping away ...

The blossom fights on for another three days, the petals slowly curling inwards and forsaking even the gentlest words of persuasion. There is nothing Geo can do or say to convince it to stay. 

The cherry blooms blossom even in Autozam, delicate and subtle, but never for very long.

Geo has only even been able to delay the inevitable.


End file.
